Climate Climate & Energy

‘Sea level in the Arctic is falling’–Sea level is a surprisingly complicated thing

(Part of the How to Talk to a Global Warming Skeptic guide)

Objection: According to the latest state-of-the-art satellite measurements from over the Arctic, sea levels are falling! Guess all that ice isn't melting after all.

Answer: Yes, a new study using Europe's Space Agency's ERS-2 satellite has determined that over the last 10 years, sea level in the Arctic Ocean has been falling at an average rate of about 2 mm/year. This is very new and very interesting news, though it is preliminary and not published in any peer-reviewed journals yet. But even if these results hold up to time and scrutiny, it is not evidence that globally sea levels are not rising, because they are.

‘Antarctic sea ice is increasing’–Yes, but …

(Part of the How to Talk to a Global Warming Skeptic guide)

Objection: Sure, sea ice is shrinking in the Arctic, but it is growing in the Antarctic. Sounds like natural fluctuations that balance out in the end.

Answer: Overall, it is true that sea ice in the Antarctic is increasing.

Around the peninsula, where there is a lot of warming [PDF], the ice is retreating. This is the area of the recent and dramatic Larsen B and Ross ice shelf breakups.

But the rest of the continent has not shown any clear warming or cooling and sea ice has increased over the last decade or so.

This is not actually a big surprise.

Heart of a Howard

Australia plagued by historic drought, not-so-responsive leadership Wondering how Australia’s doing? It’s dry as a dead dingo, thanks for asking. The “Sunburnt Country” is undergoing a severe drought — the worst in 1,000 years, according to one expert. The lack of precipitation could cut agricultural output by 20 percent, and it’s only going to get […]

‘But the glaciers are not melting’–Except … they are!

(Part of the How to Talk to a Global Warming Skeptic guide)

Objection: Sure, some glaciers are melting. But if you look at the studies, most of those for which we have data are growing.

Answer: This is simply not true, rumors on "the internets" aside. The National Snow and Ice Data Centre and their State of the Cryosphere division, on their Glacial Balance page, report an overall accelerating rate of glacial mass loss. The World Glacier Monitoring Service has similar findings, the most recent data coming from 2004.

Deceivin’ Stephen

Canadians clamor for climate action while their leader ducks the issue Canadians are more concerned about the earth than at any time in the last 15 years, says a new poll. Some 26 percent feel the environment is more deserving of government attention than any other issue, and more than half of those polled would […]

Do You Zaire What I Zaire?

Africa already feeling effects of climate change, will be hit harder While some people question whether climate change is happening, many Africans are already beginning to feel its effects — and, says a new U.N. report, the continent is at greater risk than previously thought. Some 480 million Africans could face water-security issues by 2025 […]

Homeland Insecurity

World’s energy future looks dim, says new report A report issued today by the International Energy Agency says global demand for power could surge 53 percent by 2030 unless governments push clean, efficient energy. “The energy future we are facing today, based on projections of current trends, is dirty, insecure, and expensive,” says Claude Mandil, […]

‘Global warming stopped in 1998’–Only if you flagrantly cherry pick

(Part of the How to Talk to a Global Warming Skeptic guide)

Objection: Global temperatures have been trending down since 1998. Global warming is over.

Answer: At the time, 1998 was a record high year in both the CRU and the NASA GISS analyses. In fact, it blew away the previous record by .2 degrees C. (That previous record went all the way back to 1997, by the way!)

According to NASA, it was elevated far above the trend line because 1998 was the year of the strongest El Nino of the century. Choosing that year as a starting point is a classic cherry pick and demonstrates why it is necessary to remove chaotic year-to year-variability (aka: weather) by smoothing out the data. Looking at CRU's graph below, you can see the result of that smoothing in black.

Under the Macroscope

Protests, international conference focus on U.S. climate stubbornness How many delegates does it take to convince the U.S. to address climate change? No one knows, but the 5,000 gathered in Nairobi, Kenya, for the latest U.N. climate conference are giving it a shot. The two-week event opened today with remarks from Kenyan Vice President Moody […]

Should we worry about sudden climate shifts?

We hear a lot about climate "tipping points" in the news. You may very well be wondering what a tipping point is and whether it's something to be concerned about.

To understand a tipping point, imagine that you're sitting in a canoe and you start to lean your body over one side. The canoe will slowly rotate (I think the nautical term is "list") as you lean ever further -- until, that is, you lean just far enough, and suddenly the canoe flips over, sending you into the water. You've just encountered a tipping point.

The worry is that the climate will slowly warm as CO2 is added -- until we cross a tipping point, at which point the climate abruptly shifts into a new and possibly very different state. If this happens, it would likely be a disaster of Biblical proportions, unleashing unimaginable suffering and hardship.